Bonaparte's Peninsular War

The Peninsular War was one of the longest and most drawn-out campaigns of the Napoleonic War; a piece of Imperial regime change designed to close off the last European ports open to British trade, which instead developed into the "Spanish Ulcer" that sapped the strength of Napoleon's empire and left him to fight a two-front war that would ultimately destroy him. After 1808, Napoleon left the Peninsular conflict in the hands of his brother Joseph, and of the marshals and generals commanding the various French armies. No one man was given supreme command of all French forces in Spain, and French operations – though frequently successful on a local level, were marred by a lack of cooperation. This was made yet worse by Napoleon's own attempts to run the war by remote control from Paris, sending written orders that were out of date even before they were dispatched. Though often defeated, and similarly bereft of central control for the early years of the war, the Spanish leaders kept on put